


Switch Off The Stars

by lonelywalker



Category: Terra Nova (TV)
Genre: Enemy Lovers, F/M, Outdoor Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-05
Updated: 2011-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:37:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They bring guns, and leave their politics behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Switch Off The Stars

They bring guns, and leave their politics behind.

He can still taste the bitter tang of blood in his mouth from the first time. Taylor the legend could never have survived 118 days alone in the wilderness without a survival instinct as finely honed as the sharpest knife, but Taylor the man had been caught offguard for just a moment, staring at the etchings by the waterfall.

He still has no idea why she didn’t shoot him.

A palm-sized rock had drawn blood behind his ear, sent him toppling into the water, but he’d stayed conscious and dragged himself back up to the surface to find her looking at him down the barrel of a gun.

 _Mira_. He still remembers the first time he ever saw her, when she should have been just another face in the crowd of colonists who had come on the Sixth Pilgrimage. He’d become used to the wonder and terror in their eyes by then. Jaded by years in this environment, from when this had been less a utopia and more a death camp, he’s learned to look for hope in the minds and hearts of newcomers. It reminds him of everything they’ve accomplished, and everything they must still strive to do.

But Mira… There are plenty of beautiful young people in Terra Nova. Reason dictates that a large percentage of the selected colonists are healthy and able-bodied, ready to fight or build or bear children or some mixture of the three. Mira had been strong even then, but it hadn’t been her looks that had caught his eye. Amid all of the gasps and wide eyes, she had been calm and centered. She had looked at him and smiled as though nothing in the world could ever touch her.

He’d taken it for arrogance at the time, which would no doubt be quickly crushed by either military discipline or whatever stupid OTG adventure it took to show her that there was very much in this timeline that could not only touch her, but rip her limb from limb.

But he knows now that nothing _can_ ever touch her. She’s already had everything she ever loved or valued torn away from her. What’s a little physical pain or hardship after that?

Finally they have something in common.

The first time, she’d held him at gunpoint while he was up to his chest in water, rivulets of diluted blood running down his neck. He could have verbally jousted with her all day, never giving up a scrap of information despite his throbbing headache. He had known that finally she would have to let him out. Nathaniel Taylor, camp commander and hero of Terra Nova, has always been too valuable to shoot and leave floating as dinosaur fodder.

Mira’s smart, strong, and fast, but she’s young yet. He had managed to knock her gun into the water, and then she’d knocked both of them in after it. Precisely the order of things becomes jumbled in his mind then, blurred from pain and lack of air, but he knows he’d dragged her out onto the rocks, gulping in oxygen, and he knows she had kissed him.

(She always claims it was the other way around.)

It had been stupid to leave himself vulnerable to her and her marauding Sixers, casting off wet clothing and letting her make him mindless with pure physical need. It had been stupider to let her go afterward.

And coming back here alone on a regular basis, simply to feed his basest desires? It’s insanity at best. He does it all the same.

Sometimes he waits for hours, lying back against the rocks and shutting off his radio, simply savoring the sound of the running water. No one knows where he goes. No one dares to ask, even if Wash cautions him about running off by himself. The Taylor mythology accounts for most of his apparent eccentricities, and he doesn’t want to think about the reality of the danger he’s putting himself in.

Terra Nova is well established now, with a well-trained military presence. Wash is well-regarded and more than competent as a commander, but she’s not him. Taylor would point out that he’s not _him_ either, that larger-than-life presence told of in stories both here and in 2149. Still, his death would bring untold trouble to the colony. Perhaps a real democracy will need to be established one day, but for now he knows there would be chaos. A chaos Mira would happily take advantage of for her own ends.

Yet he waits, and she always comes. Now there’s the toe of a boot in his ribs, a gun pointed at him.

He opens his eyes, blinking up into the sunlight. “Put that down. We both know you’re not going to use it.”

It’s her smile that lets him truly relax, as she holsters the weapon and crouches beside him. “Now what would happen if any of my people saw me with you _without_ a gun between us?”

“Mm, what _would_ happen?” he muses, hand on her cheek as he pulls her into a kiss. It takes her a moment to relax into it – her first instinct must always be to slap him, dig a knee into his groin, or worse.

He has to tell himself that’s it’s not about sex, however ridiculous that may seem when his fingertips are smeared with her facepaint and she’s pulling on his belt, teeth nipping his lip. (At least he’s in a profession where bruises are easy enough to explain away.) There are plenty of single women at Terra Nova, and risking his life and the colony’s safety out here with her is just… He can’t even find a word for it.

Fraternization guidelines had kept him celibate at first, and then, as civilians had started to pour in – physicians, scientists, farmers – he’d found that his people needed him to be an unshakable pillar of strength and morality more than ever. No easy rough-and-tumbles, no picking up girls at bars, not even a quick fuck from Wash, who he just _knows_ has thought about it. Still, even making a move on Shannon’s wife would be safer than this.

“Hold _still_ ,” she growls, pulling away and pushing him hard against the rocks so that pebbles dig into his back. He isn’t wearing body armor, and far few layers than her given that he doesn’t need to worry about exposure during the night, but the simple task of getting enough naked skin between them always seems horribly complicated. The fact that they’re both warriors and forcefully resistant to giving anyone else the upper hand doesn’t help at all.

Taylor sucks in a breath and makes himself _let_ her tug his belt undone, open his fly and slip a hand inside. Other men might be embarrassed by how easily he gets hard when he’s with her, as though he’s an inexperienced kid ready to come in his pants. He’s just glad the plumbing still works so smoothly. They might not have time to wait around.

Still, she pushes off her jacket once she’s got one leg over him, pinning him to the ground as she pulls her top off over her head. She’s beautiful, every inch of her, but if he says a word she’ll laugh and think him weak.

Besides, it’s not as if she would say the same about him, even if she pushes up his t-shirt as his hands cup her breasts, her fingers smoothing over old scars. He might be healthy, might stay in good shape, but there’s no denying he’s getting older, that the old aches and pains are still there, and new ones rarely ever go away completely.

“ _Nathaniel_ ,” she whispers by his ear, laughter in her voice. His hands grip her slim hips, guiding her down. He almost wants it to be uncomfortable for her, to take that note of humor out of her tone, but her body is as ready and willing as his is, almost as if their cooler heads have no say in the matter.

In another time, he wonders if they would ever have glanced at each other twice – he the dedicated soldier, she just another civilian among many he was sworn to protect. Here, though, it seems as if they have both found their true calling, millions of years before either one of them was even born. She dances among the trees, between light and shadows, like a sprite from a world even less real than this one. And he…

He tilts his head back, seeing the sun blazing red through his eyelids as he feels her moving impossibly hot around him. He’s never, _never_ vulnerable like this. Even when he had been infected by that memory-wiping virus, or a hair’s breadth from being killed by a predator, he’d never been so utterly in something, or someone else’s power.

The only way he can live with himself is by opening his eyes and seeing her – that sleek, muscular body, yes, but more the way the breath hitches in her throat, the way she looks at him with need rather than hatred or cool calculation, the way she…

His gaze goes to the insistent, rocking motion of her hips, the slide of him inside her, and words come easily to his lips about how good that feels, about how beautiful she is. He chokes them back, groaning instead. If she has anything on her mind, she says nothing either, but leans forward, touching the rough edge of her thumb to his lips in lieu of a kiss.

There are no worries about STDs in Terra Nova, something taken care of by rigorous medical screenings before and after arrival in the colony. And if the Sixers have limited-to-no access to birth control, at least he has that covered on his end. There have been moments where his strategic mind has kicked in, thinking about the merits of knocking her up, whether bearing his child would force her to end this senseless conflict. But that would be a low ploy, even for him.

Besides, she could be slitting his throat clean open now instead of running a hand down his bare chest, rubbing two fingers over her clit with such desperation he finds himself bucking up into her, needing to feel more and more.

He’s looking into her eyes when she comes, and it’s far more than his body can take.

Afterward, he can feel her lying next to him against the cool, rough stone, sweat evaporating in the breeze. He stares straight up at the blue of the sky, trying to remember what beauty he’d ever found in 2149, in that world without colors or fresh air or stars.

“You should come with me,” he says to the clouds. “We’ll treat you well. There’ll be a token period in isolation, but we all know what you have to offer. There aren’t enough of us to wage war, Mira. We have to work together for all our sakes.”

There’s the sound of boots on rock and he turns to watch her collect her clothes. “And what if I said the same to you?”

“You only have a few people. You rely on us for medical supplies and ammunition. I’d be surprised if half your people weren’t malnourished.”

She smiles only with her mouth. “It’s sweet of you to care, Nathaniel.”

Here he’s neither Taylor the commander, nor Nate the husband and father he had once been, but Nathaniel, like some glorified prophet of old. He can never tell if it’s easier for her to relate to him now as someone entirely different from her sworn enemy, or if she’s simply mocking him. Again.

He scrambles up, retying his belt, pulling down his shirt. They both need to be home safe before nightfall. “Mira…”

She hands him his gun and leans in, pressing a feather-light kiss to his cheek. “Until the next time, Commander.”

And, with a flurry of light footsteps that soon merge into the sounds of the forest, she’s gone.

He arrives back at Terra Nova an hour or so later, finding little in the way of any emergency waiting for him – Wash concerned about the drinking habits of one of her security team, Malcolm petitioning for more scientific outposts, Skye seeking some kind of advice on her latest boy trouble.

He pushes it all aside and goes home instead, to a hot shower and old photographs, and a clock counting down to the next afternoon of bliss by a waterfall.


End file.
